The Reality Of Russell Crowe

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The Oscar Winner Faced Special Challenges In Portraying The Genius And Madness Of Mathematician John Nash In A Beautiful Mind.

January 9, 2002|By Iain Blair Film Correspondent

An unknown Australian actor made his U.S. debut six years ago opposite Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman in the western The Quick and the Dead. Since then, Russell Crowe has made his mark in a wide range of films and in challenging roles, including the noir crime thriller L.A. Confidential, the true-life drama The Insider, and a little picture called Gladiator for which he won the best-actor Academy Award.

Now, in his new film A Beautiful Mind, directed by Ron Howard, Crowe has taken on yet another big challenge, this time playing Nobel Prize-winner John Nash, a shy, retiring mathematics genius who was tormented by schizophrenia, and who successfully fought his disease with the help of his devoted wife, Alicia (played by Jennifer Connelly).

On a recent day in Los Angeles, the actor seems anything but shy and retiring. But then tough-guy Crowe has never seemed to worry too much about the impression he makes. He strides into a room at the luxurious Four Seasons hotel wearing a bright red shirt over a white T-shirt and jeans, with a few days growth of beard on his face, and immediately launches into a forceful discussion of the film's themes that seems more suited to the arena of a gladiator than the subject of a brilliant intellectual.

Ask him if he thinks that there is a link between madness and genius and Crowe shoots back with, "I think it's a romantic notion to think that there's a connection between madness and genius. There are many studies that indicate that while intelligence doesn't protect you from madness, a lack of intellect doesn't protect you either. It's across the board and it's all economic and social areas of life. I think like everyone in life I've had my moments [of losing my grip on reality], but in the true sense of the terms `sanity' and `insanity,' no. I think it cheapens the seriousness of the disease to even go to that sort of area.

"Schizophrenia is a really serious disease," he continues. "The social misunderstanding about schizophrenia is that it's about split personality, whereas in reality it's about thinking on totally different planes of reason. And this film isn't a medical statement about the disease. At the same time I wouldn't want to think that we were at all stepping away from treating it as seriously as it needs to be treated."

Creating his own version of John Nash and coming to grips with the character was a long process, says Crowe. "The man is still alive, but we are dealing with situations in his life five decades previous to where he is now. In the middle of that is 35 years of hospitalization and medication. When you go into the disease you realize by looking at contemporary case studies the physical change in people that takes place with the use of that medication and with the onset of the disease, where small physical gestures that are in place and habitual prior to the disease become physical manifestations of the disease."

Crowe goes on to note that although Nash is still alive, dealing with "this big gap" in the record added to the challenge. "We had no footage of him as a young man. He may have been famous in mathematical or academic circles, but he hadn't been on TV, and there was no documented evidence of how he walked, how he talked. There was no audio for me to listen to. So how he talked now was not only adjusted by that medication, that hospitalization, the affect of the disease, but also by the fact that he had lived in Boston and different places. And there were points of his life that weren't actually in our film," he explained.

"There are three big story points here," the actor continues. "You have genius, madness and the Nobel Prize, and then you've got to hook the other developments and complications of the life of this guy around that stuff but stay true to the spirit of the story. So the actual construction of the character, a lot of it was done sort of blindfolded because, even though we had all of the stuff, we didn't actually have the real hard documented facts to rest on. So as I said, we had to take the broader things and then try and find an emotional pattern that suited the intentions of the script."

Crowe has high praise for Connelly, who plays Nash's long-suffering wife. "Jennifer is an extraordinary actress," he says, "and I think she has done a magnificent performance in this film. And I think it is possibly an area psychologically that she hasn't been to before. But that is really about opportunity. She has done a lot of work over her life and deserves the opportunity of playing a role like this and has done a magnificent job," he said.

"Not only do you have a great story of a personal and human story of triumphing against the odds, you have a magnificent romance that spanned five decades and still is in existence," sums up Crowe. "And if Alicia Nash hadn't provided the platform of continuity for John, he probably wouldn't have been able to get to the point of organizing his mind through the medication and through the disease to put into perspective what was reality and what were the indicators that he began to recognize when he was slipping into a phase of reason that was outside of that physical reality.

"For me, as important as his achievements as a mathematician, as important as the clarity of his mind and the specialness of him as a person, was the romance, the love between John and Alicia. And that makes the story itself extra special."